Fragile
by Estoma
Summary: "In a way, they're both crying for a ghost." For a friend, so she knows that we do care.


**Author's note: For a lovely friend, so she knows we care. Using the prompt 'black' from the Colour Challenge at Caesar's Palace. **

_1.  
_Annie sits by the window. The spring sunshine pours through the wide panes, casting light across her face and the window seat. It spills into the kitchen and the living room behind her, splashing over the photos in their driftwood frames, the certificates and faded, hand drawn portraits in crayon on the fridge. Drawn in a child's hand, they have a certain kind of naïve wisdom to them, and a depth of perception adults are often surprised to find in their offspring. One drawing shows a man and a woman holding hands; he with a scribble of yellow hair and she with brown. Another figure stands beside them, a scrawl of grey across the lower half of his face and a bottle clutched in one hand, though only three fingers have been drawn. He waves as cheerily as the other two. Another shows her son, Cai's memories of his last trip to District 2, when she took him to visit Johanna and her husband. Jagged brown lines represent the mountains, each topped with a cap of snow, simply paper left uncoloured, and a hectically winding road swirls up their sides, drawn in black crayon. Perched precariously halfway up a steep slope, Johanna's house in the old Victors' Village is drawn as a square with four little windows and a scrawl of smoke rising from the chimney._  
_

But most of the drawings show the same two people. Cai draws he and his mother swimming, he draws them on the beach outside the house with a turreted sandcastle, he draws them in a simple boat with square, white sails. But, her lips of pink crayon are never smiling.

The same sun that pours through the windows has faded the drawings, Annie notes. All of them show the effects of the sun; bright yellows have leeched away to dull sand grey, reds are the colour of brick rather than blood, and greens look sickly and pale. She wonders why Cai hasn't drawn more recently and with a sigh, turns back to her journal. It's a habit she has kept after the months of therapy in District 13. _I know it is completely unfair of me to be sad; I have my son, and Johanna and Katniss, but I'm still so alone,_ she writes, her hand dragging across the page, skin nearly as fragile and brittle as the paper.

_2.  
_District 4's spring is wild and changeable. Soon, the bright sunshine gives way to torrential rains. The sky opens and drenches everything in moments. Raindrops, fat like tears, hammer the windows and the roof of Finnick and Annie's house in the Victors' Village, and while it was once built as a symbol of the Capitol's generosity, there has been no maintenance done since he died, nine years ago. Unerringly, the raindrops find the places where the tin has lifted from the roof frame. Relentlessly, they force themselves through until an ugly stain appears on the ceiling of the upstairs hallway. Slowly, a drip of water forms, clinging to the saturated plaster for a moment before it splashes onto the carpet._  
_

When Cai finds his mother to tell her, she's in an old shirt that is a man's size. It hangs in folds from her shoulders and goes halfway to her knees. Innocently, Cai asks her if she borrowed it from their neighbour, Mr Dock, but she starts crying. Frightened, he crawls into her lap and waits for her to hold him. When Annie doesn't respond to her son, he picks up her arm, like a dead weight, and drapes it over his shoulders. Putting his cheek down on her chest, he can feel her warmth and her heartbeat against his skin, but she is as vacant as a ghost. When his tears join hers, and soak into her skin, Cai's body shakes with sobs; in a way, they're both crying for a ghost.

He decides not to tell her about the leak, and instead places a saucepan underneath to catch the drips. They hit the metal with a sharp _plink_, and by the time night falls, Cai has to empty it and put another down for the leaks are multiplying. He sleeps in the hallway, wrapped in the blanket from his bed, afraid that the saucepans will overflow and soak the carpet.

_3.  
_Cai stops going to school. He doesn't go because there are no clean clothes, and not much to pack for lunch, either. Most of the weekly deliveries of food are packaged in cans, or they need cooking, and his mother always does that. Cai eats bread and margarine and doesn't cut tomatoes, cheese or ham because he's not allowed to use a knife. He can't fillet the fresh cod that the delivery boy leaves, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, but he feels bad about throwing it out so he leaves it in the fridge until the smell permeates the room. Annie doesn't notice because she hadn't come downstairs for a week, and she hasn't been eating the sandwiches he brings her._  
_

Stretching on his toes, he picks the phone off the wall and hesitates. On the fridge, there are the numbers for the doctor, the school, and one or two of his mother's friends. Cai doesn't know if his mother is sick, so he discounts the doctor, and he doesn't think his teacher could do much. He doesn't want to call Katniss, because last time he saw her, in District 12, he picked some roses for her and she started crying. Slowly and carefully, he dials Johanna's number. He gets her husband, one of the victors from District 2, and he's not sure why everyone makes such a fuss about victors; his mother's a victor, and he loves her, even if she doesn't seem to love him anymore.

"Cai, slow down," Fallon says gently, as Cai tells him that his mother won't talk, and that he's missing school and he should go but he just can't and he's sorry that the house isn't very clean and the fish in the fridge smells. "I want you to go to your neighbours' house, the Docks, isn't it? We're going to sort this out real soon."

_4.  
_Johanna takes the first train from District 2, leaving her daughters with their father. The face of the child that greets her as she marches up the sandy path to the Victors' Village, has aged ten years since she last saw him. His sea green eyes have smudged shadows under them and his hair is tousled as if nobody has thought to check on him in a long time.  
"Where's your mother, Cai?"  
"She's in the bathroom and she won't come out."  
"Right."  
There is a woodpile behind the house, and a small hatchet for breaking the larger sticks into pieces the fireplace can handle. It hasn't been touched for months, and the wood is damp and cold for being left outside during District 4's mild but wet winter. The blade comes free from the block easily and it looks right in Johanna's hand.  
"What are you going to do?" Cai asks anxiously, trotting to keep up with her steps.  
"I'm going to teach your mother a lesson," Johanna growls.  
She hammers on the bathroom door but the creaking of the hinges is the only reply afforded. Johanna pushes Cai behind her with one hand and draws the other back, her muscles bunching. She's not as fit as she was when she was first married; two children have taken their toll on her, but the door is no match. The blade of the hatchet bites in deep, through the white paint, through the other side. Three more strokes around the latch and the door swings forward.  
Cai darts in, ducking under her arm, to see a sight no child should have to. Annie is prostrate on the tiles, her head turned sideways to avoid the pool of vomit that spreads slowly and coats her lips, filling the room with an acrid smell.  
"Mother?" His voice is high and frightened but Annie turns her face away from him, her long, tangled hair sweeping the filthy tiles. "Why won't she answer?"  
Johanna's anger melts away, and suddenly, she is just a frightened young girl, looking down at her own sister, laying like Annie is, in a pool of blood, not vomit. The splintered door swings sadly on its hinges. "I think she just misses your father." Johanna kneels down next to Annie and pulls Cai down with her. "Annie, I know you miss him. You see him everywhere in this place. You need a change, and you need to be with people. Come back with me to District 2."

_5.  
_Annie closes the journal with a snap that is loud and clear against the softly pattering snow. Tucking it into her pocket, she slides a pair of gloves onto her hands and wriggles her cold fingers; District 2's spring comes late. They're a pair of Fallon's, because Johanna's hands are far too small, and they're loose on her. The coat's his too, but the woollen beanie that covers her ears and comes down to her eyebrows is one of Johanna's first attempts at knitting when her pregnancy kept her confined to the house.

"What are you doing, Mum?"

Annie gazes out over the snow and it takes her a moment or too to answer. She puts her head on the side and regards the flakes with rapt attention. Tari, Johanna's oldest, told her proudly that no two flakes are alike, and showed her how to cut one out of a piece of paper, frowning with concentration. When she unfolded it, Tari led her by the hand, showing her the rest of the snowflakes that decorated the living room, and the child's creativity had ensured that indeed none of the paper flakes were the same either.

Watching the snow is hypnotic in the same way watching the waves crash on the shore is. But Annie smiles because Johanna was right. It doesn't feel like a loss, because there is still a hole but it's more like the snow, settling softly over the ground, hiding the ugly potholes and tire tracks, the bare limbs of the tress, and softening the edges. She saw Finnick in every crest of every wave, each ripple in the rock pools left by the high tide, but she doesn't see him in the softly falling flakes.

"Just looking at the snow," Annie says, patting the spot next to her on the porch. Cai sits and she puts her arm around him, tucking his head down against her shoulder, pulling his beanie more firmly over his hair. His is another of Johanna's shapeless efforts.

"Tari said when it stops, she'll show me how to build a snowman," he says, cheeks flushed with excitement as much as the cold. He starts to say something else but hesitates.

Squeezing her son tighter against her, Annie smiles, "Do you think I can learn too?"


End file.
